Saturday, February 25, 2012

Back belatedly, but bearing great news! This coming week, John Hawks will be in Denver. On his blog, he's already mentioned the talk that he's giving at the DMNS, but I want to highlight the fact that he'll also be giving a talk at 2:30PM on Friday March 2 on the UC Denver campus, as part of our Anthropology Colloquium series. The event is open to all and free to attend. Here are the details.

"Paleogenomics and the Evolution of Neandertals and Denisovans"

John Hawks, Ph.D.

Dept. of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin

John Hawks' lab is currently working with genomes of archaic humans to uncover the
relationships of these ancient people to recent
human populations. Most living people trace a fraction of their
ancestry to Neandertals, and a smaller proportion trace their ancestry
to a mysterious population called the "Denisovans", represented by a
genome from an ancient specimen from the Altai mountains.
They are uncovering the interactions among these ancient groups -- when
and where did they encounter modern humans and exchange genes with
them? They are also investigating the function of those ancient genomes,
and what new facts their genes can tell us about
Neandertal biology. He will talk about his ongoing work related to
pigmentation, immune system, muscle physiology and the brain.